The seventh novel by Mark Powell, The Late Rebellion, returns to Southern Appalachia, specifically the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a locale he explores in earlier works such as Prodigals and The Dark Corner. Powell also returns to themes of war and violence and how their impacts resonate through generations, sowing seeds of unhappiness decades into the future.
When Richard and Clara Greaves gather with their three adult children for an Oktoberfest weekend in Germantown, South Carolina, the gathering should be a joyous one. The Greaves are a respected family in Germantown, and everyone in the family seems to have been blessed with success, from the patriarch, to the children, to the children’s spouses. But beneath this seeming success lie problems which rear up in ways both subtle and profound during the course of an eventful weekend.
Richard is about to be investigated by the FBI for fraudulent transactions occurring at Mountain Empire Bank where he is founder and president. Richard is guilty, having illegally used his bank to prop up a failing textile mill that he partially owns. Mountain Empire Bank is Richard Greaves’ life’s work and as a lion in the community, his imminent fall is sure to have devastating consequences. Richard spends much of the weekend lost in the bottle as he seeks to avoid his fate and a visit with his elderly mother who has been hospitalized for a fall early that same weekend.
Meanwhile, Richard’s children are dealing with problems of their own. Jack, the eldest son and popular athletic director at the local high school is struggling as his teenage daughter Lana becomes increasingly involved with Stinson Wood – a violent, racist, high school student. Emily, the smart daughter whom everyone thinks has it all together, is struggling as she anticipates returning to her job as county solicitor after maternity leave. Emily is haunted by a case, that of a woman nearly burned to death by her husband, barely alive in a Georgia burn unit, and she is torn between a sense of obligation and a desire to run away. And the youngest son of the clan, Tom, the seemingly happy-go-lucky young man who has returned from a pilgrimage through Europe, is also dealing with a future that he is not certain he wants to confront. And all the while, the matriarch, Clara, is struggling with an addiction to pills – pills she is buying from none other than Stinson Wood.
The dynamics of the relationships that are revealed in The Late Rebellion are ones you’ve seen before: a big brother/little brother conflict; the little sister who feels compelled to take care of everything; a hard-drinking father who is struggling with his failures and looming mortality. And in the hands of a lesser writer, the story might feel pat, but Powell has the ability to go deeper, to find so much in the everyday lives of these characters, and this makes his narrative glow. This is nowhere truer than in Powell’s rendering of Emily, as she anticipates her return from maternity leave. “She didn’t want to go back,” Powell writes. “She knew it. But there is a way in which knowing ruins you, alters your shape in some irreparable way, like soap once wet. So, how could she possibly even consider not returning?” Via internal monologues such as this, Powell makes us care deeply about each of the Greaves as they struggle with the slings and arrows of everyday life.
Powell also does an excellent job of presenting the South as it is today, as opposed to how it is often inaccurately portrayed. Powell’s Germantown has plenty of good old boys, sweet tea, and bourbon. But it is also home to the Streak House on Main Street, a restaurant run by a Lebanese man, “…beloved by Germantown’s white-bread, hyper-conservative lawyer-and-doctor class.” Or Tom Greaves, a season champion on the television show American Ninja. Or Nyma Gonzalez, the high school student who lives in a motel with her migrant grandparents. Nyma “…was seventeen and currently first in her senior class. They were reading The Grapes of Wrath and, no, the irony wasn’t lost on her.” Powell’s South will ring true to those who live there.
As the narrative in The Late Rebellion plays out, we see that Richard is haunted by the loss of his brother, Teddy, to a horrible farming accident as a child, and by the silence of his father, Anson, who fought in the forests of Bastogne in the Second World War, a battle he spoke of to Richard only once in his life. Indeed, the war seemed to have so traumatized Anson that he spoke to Richard hardly at all. As the weekend progresses, Richard’s thoughts turn to Teddy, and to his father. He wonders what his life would have been like had Teddy lived, had his father never seen the awfulness he saw in the war. He wonders if all his troubles would have even occurred had Teddy never died, had his father “…had his good war on the beach in France, never seeing the frozen hell of Bastogne.” This is, of course, Richard seeking to avoid the pain of his failure in much the same way he uses his bottle of bourbon for the same purpose. Nevertheless, we also see the real impact that violence can have, even violence decades in the past.
Those eager to see plot lines tied up nicely may be somewhat disappointed by The Late Rebellion. Though the drunken Richard who eludes concerned family members throughout the novel is finally tracked down, many of the other sub-plots remain unresolved. But the ending is nevertheless satisfying in that it presents us with lives much like our own and characters much like ourselves: works in progress.
The Late Rebellion
By Mark Powell
Regal House Publishing
Published April 16, 2024
Southern Review of Books 